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I’m not sure I agree. I think millennials’ commitment to freedom of speech and information is lower than that of the older generation. (“Speech as violence” and whatnot. Young people today adopt a lot of the same modes of reasoning we ridiculed Tipper Gore for 25 years ago. It’s just directed to different perceived evils.)
And that is OK. Liberal societies function fine while banning hate speech and naziism and other types of activity. There is not a slippery slope here, we really can just ban the nazis marching in the streets and not fall into a dictatorship. It's worked fine for, say, Germany for the last 70 years.
This isn't a popular sentiment among the capital-L libertarians that tend to populate this site and software development as a whole, but even the US has limits to the type of speech that are allowed. There is no reason that the particular places they happen to have been interpreted are necessarily the optimal ones.
Again, the slippery slope theory has literally been proven false, experimentally. The US is sliding into fascism (executive/legislative lawless and direct attacks on democratic mechanisms and constitutional checks/balances) while upholding near-absolute speech rights, while the EU is maintaining democracy with stronger restrictions. There is no correlation between these things, or there is a negative correlation between these things. The libertarian theory of slippery slope-ism is false.
Elsewhere a European Court of Human Rights rules that defaming the Prophet Muhammed “goes beyond the permissible limits of an objective debate" and "could stir up prejudice" and thus exceeds permissible limits of freedom of expression.
And the fact that the US has stronger speech rights doesn't keep the police from manhandling minorities and throwing the book at them either.
These things are uncorrelated. Except for the part where one society has nazis marching in its streets and one doesn't (specifically, recalling Charlottesville).
No, the police book them for "resisting arrest" as they "dent the squad car" as they get pushed into it or whatever. They just start kicking them senseless because of the "allahu ackbar". That's not what actually goes on the ticket.
That's why we've had to institute body cam laws. Cops are gonna find a way to abuse the disadvantaged. False charges, physical abuse, all of the above.
But I guess if only the cops had more free speech this wouldn't have happened, right?
If you don't have something substantive to say, why bother commenting at all? Like, obviously, the point 'harryh is making is well taken, and is not somehow rebutted by other abuses in the US. Both things are bad, and can be addressed independently.
> If you don't have something substantive to say, why bother commenting at all?
If you dismiss my argument as unsubstantive, that's on you. Just because you find it disagreeable doesn't make it unsubstantive.
Feel free to rebut it. Of course the charge is not 'yelling allahu ackbar'. That would be illegal if cops did that. They know better, they can come up with better charges.
And that is OK. Liberal societies function fine while banning hate speech and naziism and other types of activity. There is not a slippery slope here, we really can just ban the nazis marching in the streets and not fall into a dictatorship. It's worked fine for, say, Germany for the last 70 years.
This isn't a popular sentiment among the capital-L libertarians that tend to populate this site and software development as a whole, but even the US has limits to the type of speech that are allowed. There is no reason that the particular places they happen to have been interpreted are necessarily the optimal ones.
Again, the slippery slope theory has literally been proven false, experimentally. The US is sliding into fascism (executive/legislative lawless and direct attacks on democratic mechanisms and constitutional checks/balances) while upholding near-absolute speech rights, while the EU is maintaining democracy with stronger restrictions. There is no correlation between these things, or there is a negative correlation between these things. The libertarian theory of slippery slope-ism is false.